A more stubborn and bigger (in my opinion) problem is a roach infestation. If anyone is willing to admit they have them or had them, what’s the best way of getting rid of them? If the world wasn’t engaged in exterminating them we’d be waist-deep in them in no time.
I could never live in a big city with rats....of that I am thankful.
You are right they are a horrible infester.
Have not had roaches since living in Boston and NYC 40+ years ago.
We co-existed.
Roaches....not like mice. You have to go to Boric Acid for great results.
https://pestsoff.com/how-to-get-rid-of-cockroaches/boric-acid-roaches-mistakes/
Boric Acid applied properly does the trick!
Diatomaceous earth kills most crawling bugs. Non-toxic to mammals.
Boric acid is effective against roaches. It’s fairly harmless to humans and pets but kills roaches residually for a long time.
Use a tomato duster to inject boric acid powder into crevasses around your home esp. your kitchen. Takes about a week but works very well for at least 6 months. Used that method when I lived in New Orleans when I lived in some very “porous” houses. Had kids and pets so roaches were impossible to stop through housekeeping efforts alone.
Another way to apply it is to make a super-saturated solution by adding boric acid to boiling water then squirting the still hot liquid into all the hidey holes.
Another product that works well is Cimexa. It’s non poisonous and has a 10 year residual action against all creepy crawlies. It works mechanically like ground glass in the joints of any terrestrial arthropod so they become dehydrated and die. Cimexa is one of the few ways to wipe out bedbugs since they can’t be poisoned because they never eat anything but you.
I second boric acid. Works wonders. You don’t need much, just sprinkle a little in the cracks and crevices where they crawl, and your problem is solved. It dries them out and they die, but not before they carry it back to their nesting areas, where it kills the others. At least this is how it was explained to me.
Food attracts them. No food and they won’t invade, or stay, if one of them happens to do a walk thru of your place to check it out. So, clean up after meals. Eat only at the dinner table. No eating on the sofa, no pet food on the floor, etc. Crumbs attract them. If I see one cockroach, I squish him. If I see two, out comes the boric acid. A one pound container you pick up at the pharmacy will last forever. I’ve had mine for 30 years. It never expires AFAIK.
Anyhoo, check it out on the web, youtube, etc. Heed all the warning advice, then go to town and get rid of your roaches forever! Good luck!
A local extermination company spraying inside and out-quarterly, worked well for me. Nothing freaks me out more than roaches.
I’ve suffered an occasional eruption of cockroaches after goofing off too long on keeping the garbage cleared out in the summer. The first step obviously is to toss out all the garbage and clean up stray bits of food and patches of grease wherever you can find them. You might have to dig around a bit for hidden corners such as inside your stovetop or at the back of your pantry shelves.
Next, get yourself a one-pound squeeze bottle of Enoz “Roach Away” Boric Acid for $2.97 at Walmart. Adjust the nozzle to allow a fine dusting of the stuff in areas you’ve seen the roaches frequent. A little goes a long way — don’t overdo it, or the roaches will avoid the overly heavy dusting. Sit back and wait for the boric acid to gradually kill every roach that picks up the dust and then ingests it while grooming. Live roaches will eat the dead ones in their hiding spaces and die as well. Depending on the severity of your roach problem, the size of your house or apartment, and the nature of your region’s typical infestations, that one-pound bottle of boric acid should last many years.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Enoz-Roach-Away-Boric-Acid-1-lb/19276149
If you’re in a hurry to destroy a horror-movie outbreak of roaches, clean out a large glass pickle jar, and spread a very thin layer of neutral petroleum jelly inside the jar around the rim. A protective barrier of two or three inches of petroleum jelly all around the inside rim will do the trick. Paste a couple of strips of duct tape from the outside bottom of the jar all the way to the rim to make it easy for roaches to climb up and fall into the open glass jar. The thin layer of petroleum jelly around the inner rim at the top will prevent roaches from climbing out. It’s amusing in a gross way to see them scuttling frantically to the top and then vainly falling back down into the bottom of the jar. If you hoist up the jar for a closer look, you might have to control an involuntary urge to violently toss away the jar when an especially large roach seems about to escape and crawl on your arm on its way to your brain.
Dabs of peanut butter or small slices of ripe banana, peel and all, serve fine as bait. You can slice up an entire ripe banana and freeze the unused bits in a plastic storage bag. Banana slices especially seem to attract classic German cockroaches like crazy. Put the jar out near where you’ve seen the most roaches and let it go for a day or so. Be warned that you may shriek like a little girl the first time you check the roach harvest — if your outbreak was bad, you’ll likely see dozens of them or even over a hundred. Pour a couple of inches of hot water into the bottom to instantly kill the roaches, and then pour the nasty-ass mess into the toilet and flush it about fifty or sixty times to regain your peace of mind. Just kidding! One flush is enough.
Put the emptied jar upside down somewhere for an hour to drain and dry out before you resettle it with more bait. You probably won’t have to refresh the thin layer of petroleum jelly more than once every three or four cycles of flushing and rebaiting, but if you’re the nervous type, lightly refreshing it each time won’t hurt. Don’t try to kill the trapped roaches with any method other than hot water, or you may end up inadvertently contaminating the jar with a noxious scent that drives away roaches instead of trapping them.
Happy hunting!
Orkin wfollowup.spraying along baseboards etc have seen 2 since stomped on them think the cats might keep them not sure that was in the 70’s was got some food grade diatomaceous earth don’t know if that would help w/roaches or not was fighting fleas but didn’t have to break open the bag
Sprinkle baking soda behind cabinets, frig, stove, etc. It’s cheap and not poison. The roaches eat it and they explode because they can’t digest it.
I would try essential oils they hate. In a condo we were renting, they would slip out of an overhead enormous light fixture in the bathroom. I was terrified of them or filled with hatred of them, I can’t tell which, and had small children so I didn’t want poison. There are some herbs they hate the smell of. If you know their point of entry, blanket it and other surrounding points of entry with a smell they can’t stand. I remember it was a smell that was quite pleasant (to us). We never saw them again.